


Fontainebleau

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: 75 Dates In The Skam Universe, Bipolar Disorder, Bouldering, Camping, Car Sex, Driving, Fontainebleau, Future Fic, Hand Jobs, Jealousy, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Road Rage, Road Trips, Rock Climbing, Slice of Life, Summer, Tent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-13 19:09:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: Lucas, let’s go camping, Eliott says, and with a vision of perfect quiet and green leaves unfurling before his eyes, Lucas agrees without even looking up from his problem set.*The summer after Lucas' first year in university, Lucas and Eliott take a weekend trip to Fontainebleau.





	1. I saw our future there in the blue glass

**Author's Note:**

> The time has come to juggle WIPs (fling your WIPs into the air! See what you can catch when they start to fall!). I have five chapters planned, but it might turn into six.

They arrange to take the Demaurys’ spare car to Fontainebleau. It surprises Lucas that M. Demaury agrees so readily, that Mme. Demaury only laughs and tells them to enjoy themselves; that she changes the subject, seemingly out of genuine interest, without any ulterior motive or intention to cause guilt, and asks Eliott how his internship at the gallery is going.

Most of all, it surprises him that Eliott knows how to drive.

“I learned with Lucille,” Eliott says, as they walk to the bus stop. “Well, what I mean is, Lucille taught me.”

“_Lucille_?”

And he learns that Lucille’s parents have taken the same lax approach to driving as some parents do with table wine and children: a little sip here, a little sip there, no harm done. Her maternal grandparents have a farm in Haute-Normandie: lambs, cows, and plenty of dirt track for stick shift practice. He hears the story of how Lucille tore the bumper off her cousin’s jalopy the summer after _quatrième_, racing it over a hill. Eliott laughs as he tells it, giggling through his fingers under the cold blue glow of the new LED streetlights.

They’re taking the long way to the Menilmontant stop, their favorite meandering route that includes the circling of an entire block. There’s a particular corner where a single 1981 centime has been entombed in the cement between cobbles, and Eliott likes to kiss him there, centered above that bright speck of silver.

For luck, he usually says, though tonight _Lucille_ is still on his lips as he bends down, and Lucas can feel the soft double ls hovering between them, half-swallowed.

The bakery by the centime is already beginning its production for the next day. He smells the sweetness of vanilla and fruit and hears the voice of Eliott, aged seventeen, smiling and reassuring in the kitchen of Lucas’ old apartment: _We’re not together anymore, me and Lucille_.

Eliott and his voice are nineteen now, and Eliott-and-Lucas have been together two years, one year more than Eliott-and-Lucille. He reminds himself that it’s not a game, but he also reminds himself that he is winning. The flush that rises to his cheeks feels like the heat of Eliott’s hands cupping his face. He wants nothing more than to stay there, clasped in the warmth of that memory, but Eliott is already moving away.

“Ah,” Eliott says over his shoulder, “but don’t worry, I took lessons with my mother, too, and an instructor; I drive very well, in fact.”

He mumbles something about the topography of Fontainebleau. No scraping of bumpers or disemboweling of cars there.

“And the car is automatic,” Eliott continues happily. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” he says, “nothing important.”

“You’re okay with the gear?” Eliott says, as they arrive at Menilmontant. It’s late, but there are still people gushing onto the street from the metro, dressed for dancing. “You got the sleeping pad?”

He starts to answer and stops as a flock of laughing, glowstick-haloed revelers push between them.

Eliott looks at them with irritation. “The pad?” he repeats, louder, over the procession of dull fluorescent crowns.

“Yeah,” Lucas says.

Eliott grins. “I’m excited,” he says.

The grin is impossible to resist. “Yeah,” he says, “me, too.”

The 71 arrives, blasting its horn at the people crossing the street. The driver does not look especially patient—as the door opens, drunken singing filters out into the night—so Lucas settles for a quick squeeze of the hand and a peck on the mouth.

“Tomorrow,” he says. He taps his card and wiggles his fingers at Eliott through the window as they pull away.

At the back of the bus, the students are wading through _La Mer_, dissolving into foamy laughter between verses. He texts Eliott a recording of the performance and receives a line of wave emojis ten seconds later.

He thinks, why couldn’t we have gone to the sea?

He knows the answer, of course. They’ve talked about it.

_We’ve been to the beach before_, Eliott says. _With everyone._

_So let’s go by ourselves, just the two of us,_ he says.

He’s already imagining it, the long golden lines of Eliott’s body, the slight stickiness of his skin under Lucas’ probing fingertips, the grainy rub of sand along the planes of his chest, his shoulders. The rush and sweep of the water, either the heavenly blue of the Mediterranean or the steel of the Atlantic. Northern or southern sun, it doesn’t matter, only put Eliott beneath it.

_I can’t lie around like that, _Eliott says, _for a whole three days, no fucking way, I’ll die, _and Lucas believes him. All of his studies of the spring semester have been jittery, frenetic-looking, almost jagged. They’re a change from the autumn canvases, those frightening black masses in charcoal and gouache, but Lucas isn’t sure the change is welcome. He can sense something in the air, almost, a cold electricity. He looks at Eliott carefully these days; he tracks the quantity of pills in Eliott’s bottles in the Demaury medicine cabinet and stops short of handing them to Eliott like he would vitamin supplements to a recalcitrant child: that would be grounds for separation. He doesn’t want to admit that Eliott was right about this, that Eliott would pretend to take his pills, or refuse, and that Lucas would get angry about it, and raise his voice, and take to monitoring doses in a notebook.

He talks to Basile about it, drinking at a meeting point equidistant between their universities; he should mention it to Lucille, they’re on speaking terms after all, she cares about Eliott, but he can’t bring himself to do it, not even a text message.

_I want to take him away somewhere,_ he tells Basile. _Just the two of us_, he repeats, when Basile starts to invite him to join their expedition to Daphné’s aunt’s holiday cottage in Brittany. (Blithely, without asking Daphné first, though Lucas is sure Daphné would say yes.) Things are slowing down for the end of term, but Eliott isn’t; he works long hours at the gallery, putting in extra time when he should be painting and painting when he should be sleeping.

_Lucas, let’s go camping,_ Eliott says when he comes over the next week, and with a vision of perfect quiet and green leaves unfurling before his eyes, Lucas agrees without even looking up from his problem set.

_Fontainebleau_, Eliott says, when Lucas asks, _we went there when I was little, my family. The forest is so beautiful, Lucas, and there are trails…_

Later, when exams are over and he begins researching camp sites, he grows anxious, remembering that Arthur broke up with a girlfriend after trekking across a portion of the Camino de Santiago. But that was a whole mess of extenuating circumstances, more convoluted than a season of _Plus belle la vie_. So far Eliott has not made any strange demands regarding relics or Masses or matching saint-inspired tattoos, although he has wondered aloud, and apparently in earnest, whether they will see any raccoons.

The drunken students disembark at Bercy. The bus leaves them behind and glides over the Seine, and Lucas looks away from the reflection of bright lights on black water: it still makes him uneasy, the river at night.

He reminds himself that not even Lucille, rip-roaring, stick-shifting, mud-racing Lucille has gone into the woods with Eliott.

_You’re the first_, he repeats, _the first_.

The collection of the camping gear among the guys takes on the air of a wedding gift registry. They know things have been tough, that Lucas has missed Eliott's end-of-term exhibition, that he and Eliott haven't had a moment to themselves in weeks. They're almost more invested in the getaway than Lucas is, exclaiming and cheering when the plans are announced. Arthur claps him on the back and says, _Attaboy!_

They talk the trip over at dinner one night, and over the next three weeks they gather materials like squirrels. Basile contributes a mountain of backpacking food in blue foil packets, some of them already expired. Arthur loans his 30L backpack and hiking boots with their mismatched pink and green laces, and Yann tops the pile off with a Decathlon gift card, which Lucas combines with his own savings to buy the best inflatable sleeping pad he can find at an early summer sale. His parents give him a set of headlamps and a solar charger for his birthday. From his hydrogeology classmate Olivier, a self-proclaimed former dirtbag from Québec, he receives an unexpected present of climbing chalk. Eliott will be bringing the tent and stove.

Yann watches him pack the night before, slowly, methodically, checking things from his list.

“Bro,” Yann says. “You’re looking grim.”

“I don’t want to forget anything,” he says. He crams a fistful of granola bars into a side pocket. “Fucksake, where did I put the headlamps?”

“Here,” Yann says, finding them under a couch cushion.

“Fuck,” he says. “Thanks.”

It’s different, living with Yann. A sort of controlled chaos. Lucas is never sure where anything is, but he knows that sooner or later, everything will gravitate toward the couch. It isn’t even the same one from the coloc (Mika and Lisa threatened to kill him when he tried to take it), but it exudes a similar sinister power, though with none of the sentimental history. He flips the second couch cushion over and finds a blue foil packet of pad thai nestled amid other detritus.

“How the hell,” Yann starts. “Oh, shit, Chloé’s headphones!”

He pulls them free—they’re dark metallic navy and dainty, very Chloé—and hands them to Yann, who pockets them to return to Chloé tomorrow. She’s coming to stay while Lucas is in Fontainebleau.

Things are still a little awkward with Chloé, not because of any lingering bad feeling, but a general, persistent embarrassment about everything that happened in _première_. Neither of them likes being reminded of their worst selves. Chloé is always cordial but distant, and sometimes Lucas goes to the library when he knows she’s coming over, just to avoid having to make small talk.

He’s put off renewing the lease and asked more than once if Yann wants Chloé move in instead next year, but both times Yann shakes his head so vehemently his teeth seem to rattle.

_Bah, no,_ Yann says the first time. _Her school’s on the other side of the city, the dorm’s more convenient for her, it just makes more sense…_

_I don’t even know if we wanna move in together yet, you know? _he says the second time. _Gotta enjoy the bachelor lifestyle while we still can, bro!_

Then he coughs and looks uncomfortable. _Uh, that is…_

_It’s fine_, Lucas says. _Eliott should stay with his parents._

He replaces the couch cushion and examines the backpack. He’s done a good job: everything fits neatly, no lumps, no bulging zippers; the organization is both simple and logical. He maps out the contents in his head again, as carefully as he would a blueprint. “All done.”

“Sweet,” Yann says. He cracks the fridge open and retrieves two beers. “Expedition Fontainebleau is a go. Mario Kart?”

“Sure.”

The sky is gray the next morning. The clouds are looking distinctly pulpy by the time Eliott arrives in the Demaury car, a silver Renault Megane with streaky windows, but Lucas isn’t too worried. He checked the forecast last night and checks it again as he eats his breakfast: scattered showers that will disperse by noon.

Yann, still in his pajamas, helps them load everything into the trunk, laughing off Lucas’ protests.

“I feel like I should be waving a handkerchief at you,” he says. “My little Lucas, all grown up.”

“We’re only going for a few days,” Lucas says. “Stop acting like it’s a honeymoon.”

“I should be throwing rice,” Yann says, pretending to wipe away a tear; in fact, it’s a droplet of rain. “I should be releasing butterflies.”

“They wouldn’t make it too far in this weather,” Lucas says. The drizzle turns into a downpour, and he imagines the butterflies dropping to the ground like sodden autumn leaves, yellow and gold, being crushed into black ichor beneath the wheels of the Megane; it’s an oddly morbid thought, and he frowns at himself and takes another sip of coffee from his Thermos.

Yann has taken to calling them _les maris_ in the group chat. Eliott seems to like the nickname. He steps around the driver’s side of the car now, squinting through the rain, saying, “Lucas, shall I lift you over the threshold? Let’s begin our new life together in the forest.”

“With the raccoons,” Lucas says. He nods goodbye at Yann and gets into the car himself.

Eliott plops in beside him. “But yes, with the raccoons.” He smiles at Lucas so brightly that Lucas thinks the rainclouds will disappear: nothing can withstand Eliott when he is happy and everyone and everything in the world is his friend.

Impulsively, Lucas leans over and kisses him, and by the time they pull apart, the rain really does seem to have tapered.

“Well,” Eliott says softly, “shall we?”

“We shall,” Lucas says.

Yann has already gone inside. They fasten their seat belts, and Eliott pulls out from the curb.

Lucas punches the campsite address into his phone. He watches the front door of his apartment getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, a chipped fragment of blue that soon disappears.


	2. You and me together in the green grass

Eliott swears more times in the twelve minutes it takes for them to get on the A6 than he has the entire rest of the year. The GPS sends them crawling down a narrow alley, which has Eliott cursing at a rate of approximately one _putain _per centimeter. He also calls a pedestrian a disgrace to humanity and pounds on the dash.

“Did you learn this from Lucille, too?” Lucas asks. He isn’t sure whether to be amused or alarmed; either way, his mouth is twitching.

Eliott looks embarrassed. “Ah, no,” he says. “From my mother, actually. Sorry,” he says, and in the same breath, furiously, “Are you turning or not, you fucking son of a bitch? Thanks for signaling. _Fuck_.”

It’s hard to imagine Irène Demaury bellowing obscenities at cyclists. She’s always been so calm, so placid: all her movements are slow and graceful, her speech measured, her words carefully chosen.

“Only when she drives in the city,” Eliott says. He’s blushing. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “Do you want to play some music?”

There’s no aux port—the car’s too old. Lucas fiddles with the radio for a bit, toggling through talk shows and Booba. After a minute of static, he gives up and opens up the music app on his phone. The sound is thin, and the GPS keeps interrupting, but then _Toi et Moi _rotates on and he watches as a trace of that sunbeam smile returns to Eliott’s lips. The Renault charges forward. Lucas mouths the lyrics and drums along and thinks of the forest of Fontainebleau rushing to meet them: a wall of endless green. 

But first there are farms and fields. The road lies quietly between them. He starts to exclaim over a flock of sheep and thinks about Lucille’s grandparents, the red farmhouse in Haute-Normandie and its racing track, and bites his lip. Instead, they make a game of counting motorcyclists and RV campers. Eliott speeds when Lucas’ phone is playing EDM and slows down when the beats bleed into The Clash.

“Six, that’s six, seven, eight, nine, whoa! Ten,” Eliott says, as a fleet of motorcyclists blast by, weaving between the Megane and a slow white van. “Cool jackets.”

The bikers, in black and red, are already insect-tiny through the windshield. Lucas glances at oncoming traffic, filled with trucks barreling toward Paris: produce, packages, chemicals.

“Traffic’s gonna suck when we get back,” he murmurs. Eliott’s calmed down since they merged onto the highway, but Lucas is sure his temper will fray again when they get stuck behind the phalanx of cargo.

Eliott scoffs. “Come on,” he says. “You’re looking the wrong way. Don’t look back, Lucas.”

He tells Lucas what he remembers of Fontainebleau: the magical green stillness, the carpet of leaves across the paths. At any moment he was expecting kings and queens to burst from the undergrowth, riding hard in pursuit of white stags or unicorns. Their retainers would thunder after them, accompanied by bellowing hounds and yellow-eyed falcons.

“Unicorns, really,” Lucas says, teasing. “Raccoons are already unlikely, but unicorns!”

He thinks of little Eliott, less than a meter high, turning wondering eyes toward a canopy of green light, shuffling through the underbrush, bending down to curl chubby fingers around twigs and rocks.

He looks at Eliott’s fingers, now, long and slim and elegant, relaxed around the steering wheel. He wants to hold Eliott’s hand; he settles for holding his own, clasped in his lap in a shard of fierce noon sunlight.

“Did you climb at all?” he asks.

“Climb?” Eliott guides the car toward the exit for Malesherbes.

“The boulders,” Lucas says. “How old were you when you went? Five, six? I guess that’s too young to try.”

“Boulders,” Eliott repeats, sounding puzzled.

“It’s a huge destination for climbers,” Lucas says. “Boulderers. I thought you knew. There’s the Voie Michaud, the Helicopter, Return to the Source, Duroxomanie…” He counts on his fingers. “Kiddie routes too, marked with white paint. I brought chalk, actually. If you want to try.”

“Oh yeah?” Eliott glances at him, grinning. “I didn’t know you were into climbing. That’s cool, Lucas. You’re full of surprises. I love it.”

He can feel himself turning pink. “Ah, no,” he says, equal parts sheepish and pleased. “I don’t know anything about it except what Olivier told me. He gave me the chalk, actually.”

Eliott glances at him again. “You asked Olivier?”

“Well, sure,” he says. “Olivier knows all about the outdoors. Olivier, the Québecois, that Olivier, I told you about him. He grew up climbing. In a tiny village up north. Val-Something. There was nothing to do but climb. Fuck, you should see his hands, Eliott, his fingers are like sausages!”

He spreads his own hands wide. He can imagine Olivier’s fingers, bafflingly thick and powerful: powdered with chalk, they’d look just like salchichons.

“He’s been going to Fontainebleau for years,” he says. “He was so pumped when I told him we were planning this trip. He’d be camping out in Fontainebleau all summer, he said, except that fucking Duroche won’t give him the time off. Duroche the lab manager,” he explains. “He sounds like an asshole. Thank fuck I didn’t pick wastewater for my elective. Anyway, it’s Olivier’s chalk. His special Québec chalk, the best in the world, he said.”

“Oh,” Eliott says.

Lucas sees the tightening of his knuckles on the steering wheel and looks up at the road, alarmed, but there is no traffic, just a lone cow flicking its tail behind a low fence.

Eliott says, “Can you change the song? This one’s putting me to sleep.”

The campgrounds are serene and upscale. There are swans in the water; the main road is white gravel, and the check-in hut with its shingled roof sits atop a neatly manicured green lawn.

“The château of Fontainebleau,” Eliott murmurs as they approach, and Lucas laughs and elbows him.

Inside, a woman in a green polo takes their names and checks their reservation in her computer. She can’t be that much older than they are, and she has a Parisian accent and a silk-soft voice. Lucas thinks she must be a university student. She clearly thinks _Lucas _is in terminale, an upstart younger brother, maybe. She looks Eliott over top to bottom, and her hazel eyes gleam as she slides the campground map across the counter.

“Let me know if you need help finding anything,” she says. “I’m Marielle, by the way.”

“Mm,” Eliott says, and Lucas is perversely delighted to see that he doesn’t so much as smile; he’s distracted, peering at the map.

Marielle starts to point toward the tent sites, her fingertips creeping toward Eliott’s, and Lucas sweeps the map away and says, “We’re good, thanks, bye.”

They take a wrong turn and wind up in the RV section. A pair of children pedal by slowly on bicycles; both have training wheels and streamers on their handlebars. A chime hangs from the side of one of the parked RVs, rotating and flashing lazily in the sun.

Eliott laughs and says, “We should have let her give us directions.”

“Why?” Lucas says. “It’s not a big place. Turn right here, Eliott, right. _Right_.”

“I’m just going to reverse.”

“You’re going too fast!”

“Lucas…”

“Sorry,” Lucas says. “Maybe wait until the last day to flatten some kids. Okay?”

Eliott giggles and taps the brakes.

He makes Eliott slow down again and stop as they pass by a shed selling firewood. He jumps out to inspect the offerings. They all look the same: hefty, splintery chunks of wood lashed together with clear tape and heavy-duty zip ties. He jams a five euro note into the lockbox and grabs two bundles from the top of the stack.

Eliott raises his brows. “Are you planning to burn the forest down? One is enough, I think.”

“The leftovers are souvenirs,” he jokes. “I didn’t have change.”

Eliott chuckles. “Imagine Baz’s face when you present him with a log.”

“I’ll tie a ribbon around it,” he says, and they laugh.

Their site is a secluded spot at the end of a thin gravel prong. Eliott backs the car onto the grass and kills the engine, and they sit, suspended in silence, watching the pattern of sunlight dappling the green expanse while birds sing overhead and the wind murmurs through the trees.

“Lucas,” Eliott says breathlessly. He snakes an arm around Lucas’ shoulders and hauls him in close to kiss him. Then he bounds from the car, shouting, “This is incredible!”

A crow flaps into the sky, croaking in alarm.

“Lucas!” Eliott calls, spinning in a circle. The sun shines on his hair. He’s laughing, kicking off his shoes.

Lucas grins and follows.

Eliott’s stove is a Demaury family heirloom and looks it; in fact, it looks like it has survived the Second World War, Lucas says, part of a Resistance fighter’s backcountry kit. _It was your great-aunt’s_, he guesses, _she bought it when she joined the Maquis._ Eliott snorts and says it was his father’s. All it has survived is a stint in the Alps in the 1990s. He sets it proudly on the metal grill of their fire-ring, arranging the handles just so, and turns around.

“Oh,” he says, “not like that, Lucas.”

Lucas has unzipped the tent bag and shaken its contents into the grass. Green nylon, black collapsible tent poles, bright silver metal stakes.

“Not like what?” he says absently. He squints at the manual. The tent is pristine. It looks brand new and expensive, and he wonders—but does not ask—how much Eliott paid for it. The bag was factory-sealed.

Eliott is making a face at him. “Come on,” Eliott says, “you don’t need the _manual_, do you, M. L’Ingénieur?”

He sets the manual aside, weighing it down with a handful of stakes, and gets to work. There aren’t that many moving pieces. Eliott’s right: he’s an engineer, he can figure it out. But after what seems like an eternity of wrangling, he can’t even get the tent poles to stay together. He flings them back into the grass.

“Fuck!” he snaps.

“Here,” Eliott says, coming up beside him. “Let me…”

Eliott squats down beside the fractured poles, and Lucas stomps back to the car to rummage through their belongings. Eliott has brought his own backpack—the one he’s kept since lycée. Bits of faded canvas peek out behind splashes of old and new paint. There’s a spot of oil paint that hasn’t even dried; it’s left a rusty patch of orange in the trunk. He winces and tries to rub it into the upholstery with his fingers, and then he leans against the car and takes a picture as Eliott brandishes the tent poles in both hands like spears.

He posts a picture to Instagram. By the time he’s done filtering, Eliott has raised the tent as though by magic and is wiggling the stakes into the ground.

“You’re a wizard,” he says. “How’d you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Eliott says, “I just sort of…” And he waves his hands around and shrugs.

Lucas snorts. Together, they haul the sleeping gear inside, and Eliott whistles as Lucas unfurls the sleeping pad.

“Lucas,” he says, wide-eyed, “I swear this is better than my mattress at home.”

“We’ll have to test that hypothesis,” Lucas says. “Thoroughly. Scientifically.”

Eliott flushes. “Yeah,” he says.

“I brought a cooler,” Lucas says, seeing the smear of orange on his fingertips and remembering Eliott’s backpack, “if you wanna put your meds…”

Eliott is silent, and Lucas swallows and wishes he hadn’t said anything. But after another moment, Eliott says, “You think of everything.”

He opens his arms and Eliott drops into them, and they zip up the tent and lie together in the warm green light.

“Lucas, I’m so excited,” Eliott says, “I love it, I wish we could stay a whole week.”

Lucas kisses him and keeps kissing him. He sucks Eliott’s lower lip into his mouth and bites it, and Eliott shivers, and then they both freeze as they hear another car crunching over the gravel nearby. A car door slams, and another, and adult voices call to each another. A child yells and bursts into delighted laughter. Lucas puts his head on Eliott’s shoulder, groaning.

“Later,” Eliott promises.

They spend the afternoon swimming in the Loing. Lucas puts the solar charger to use on his phone and the headlamps on a nearby picnic table. At one point, he thinks he sees Marielle walking by in her polo, and he makes sure to kiss Eliott just then, nice and slow, as they stand chest-deep in green water.

When the last glow of sunlight fades beneath the treetops, he and Eliott return to their campsite hand in hand. Smiling, Eliott starts to lead him toward the tent, but Lucas digs his feet into the grass.

“The fire,” he says.

“Tomorrow,” Eliott says, and, “Lucas,” and Lucas swallows and nods and follows Eliott inside.

He tries to take his time. They’ve had so little of it together lately, between Eliott’s end-of-term portfolio submissions and his internship and Lucas' exams. He makes the trek to the Demaury apartment whenever he can, but he hasn’t been able to do much more than kiss Eliott in the doorway when he arrives and departs; he doesn’t feel able to do more, somehow, when the Demaurys are there. And as understanding as Yann has been, the walls are thin. It’s fine for Eliott, Lucas thinks; Eliott gets to skip off into the morning, whistling, but he, Lucas, has to stay behind and eat his breakfast knowing that Yann has heard everything.

It was different at the coloc. He didn’t mind Mika and Lisa overhearing. Sometimes he _wanted_ them to hear, wanted them to know exactly how happy he was. But lately all he and Eliott ever seem to do is tiptoe around.

Now, he teases Eliott as long as they both can stand it, with his hands and his mouth, drawing noises from Eliott’s lips that grow louder and more agonized. He could do this forever, he thinks, surrounded in this quiet green dome and vast private darkness, he could—

“_Lucas_,” Eliott gasps, and Lucas tries to close his lips around him, but Eliott is already coming, moaning, striping Lucas’ cheek and the nylon.

The nylon drips. Eliott pounces. When he jerks Lucas off, he isn’t slow or careful at all: he drags Lucas into his lap and keeps him there, trapped, spread, and Lucas shouts and spatters both Eliott and the sleeping pad as he comes.

Afterward, they eat apples and granola bars in the tent, their bodies glued together, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, sticking their bare feet through the flap onto the grass. The sky is black now, the air cool and still, and Lucas can see the bright gleams of campfires through the leaves.

They clamber out to brush their teeth, and Lucas finds the wet wipes and mops the tent clean. Eliott grimaces apologetically at him below the light of his headlamp, his toothbrush dangling from his mouth, and Lucas can’t resist; he springs at Eliott and kisses him again, peppermint foam and all.

In the tent, the sleeping pad rustles as Eliott curls around him. Eliott’s lips brush his forehead.

“Good night,” Eliott whispers.

Lucas smiles. He takes a deep, deep breath, rubbing his cheek against Eliott’s shoulder, filling his lungs with Eliott, and closes his eyes.


	3. I don’t want to wait ’til the last call

Lucas opens his eyes in the morning to sun shining on the bare golden knob of Eliott’s shoulder, visible through the loose neck of his t-shirt. They’ve both gotten tanned from their afternoon by the river; Lucas feels a little burned, even, along the back of his neck.

Eliott sleeps on his side with his hands close to his chest, curled in on himself. The light sparkles on his eyelashes. Outside, the birds are singing. Lucas stares and stares, drinking it all in.

A frown begins between Eliott’s eyebrows, and he murmurs, “Lucas?”

“Hi,” Lucas says, nosing at him. He feels the puff of Eliott’s breath against his lips as he smiles.

Sleepily, Eliott shimmies down the sleeping pad until he can tuck his head under Lucas’ chin. Lucas wraps his arms around him and squeezes. He’s hard, and he wonders if Eliott can feel it, poking against his stomach.

Eliott’s chuckle vibrates into his body.

“Good morning,” Eliott says.

“Hi,” Lucas says again. He rolls his hips. A second later, Eliott is surging over him; he pins Lucas to the pad and grinds against him while Lucas moans.

“What time is it?” Eliott says. “We shouldn’t stay in bed too late. It’ll get hot.”

“_Get_ hot,” Lucas gasps. He combs his fingers into Eliott’s sleep-wild hair and tugs and bites Eliott’s chin, tongue and teeth rasping against the stubble. “Excuse me, pardon me, I think you’ll find that it’s already—_oh_,” he says, as Eliott shoves a hand under his waistband, “oh _fuck_, Eliott. Eliott!”

Eliott bites him back, sucking hard at his pulse, and Lucas arches and swears, thrusting against Eliott’s palm. It’s over embarrassingly quickly, and he lies there sweating and tingling while Eliott smirks at him.

“I only packed one change of clothes,” he complains.

“You can borrow some of mine,” Eliott says.

“Like they’re any cleaner,” Lucas mutters, as Eliott tugs his sweatpants down and slides himself into Lucas’ waiting hands. But he scrunches Eliott’s t-shirt up so he can flick his tongue against Eliott’s nipple, and keeps the shirt there while he strokes him, so it won’t get too dirty.

“I want to hear you,” he whispers, grinding his thumb against the head of Eliott’s cock. “Say my name.”

“Lucas,” Eliott says brokenly, “Lucas, _putain_,” and he slumps forward, gasping.

They emerge together, blinking, into the sunshine, wiping their hands furtively on the grass. The camp is quiet. The family that drove up yesterday has set up an entire system of tents, but no one seems to be home.

“Thank God,” Eliott says. Lucas laughs.

They make their way to the toilets separately—Lucas doubles back for his toothbrush—and shuffle back together. Eliott reaches for his hand, and Lucas catches it, pressing his fingertips into the divots between Eliott’s knuckles.

After breakfast, they drive to the Platières d’Apremont and the village of Barbizon, thirty minutes away at the western edge of the forest. Lucas researched trails for weeks, comparing distance and difficulty and elevation gain and variation of scenery, but in the end, he picked Apremont for a completely frivolous reason: the closed loop contains a site called the Brigands’ Cave, and he can’t get it out of his head; it was human-made and chiseled into existence long after any medieval bandits lived in the forest, but he imagines it must feel like the cave of Alibaba, dark and mysterious, glittering with secret treasure. If Eliott has always wanted to be a prince hunting unicorns, then Lucas has wanted to be an outlaw, shooting arrows in the dense greenery, flitting between leafy shadows.

He brings the chalk bag along too: Olivier’s eyes lit up when he talked about Apremont, in particular about a boulder called the Elephant.

Through the slight blue tint of the windshield, the fields are burgeoning, golden. A green sweep of forest rises in the distance. In just two months, it’ll be fall, and this scenery will be a patchwork of rich autumn color. In the thirteenth arrondissement where he lives and studies, the concrete stays gray in all seasons, except when it snows.

Heat shimmers in a translucent band along the horizon. Lucas hopes they’ve brought enough water.

The hike at Apremont is an eleven kilometer circuit that begins and ends near a boulder field. The late summer leaves interlace overhead like the embroidery on a medieval tapestry, individual blades and veins and stems blurring together into a dark velvet canopy. Lucas and Eliott shoulder their packs and follow the No. 6 trail, a ribbon of red duff that winds through eroded sandstone ridges and outcroppings furred over with gorse. Constellations of tiny yellow and purple flowers shine between the towering oaks. 

Within the tunnel of trees, the air is cool and damp, but on the bald rock, the late July sun beats down on them, and they stop to put on their hats. Lucas’ is a blue baseball cap, easy and unremarkable; Eliott wears his black bucket hat, which his mother gave him for his birthday, possibly as a joke.

He’d look just as good if he were wearing an actual bucket on his head, Lucas thinks fondly. He tugs on either side of the brim to pull Eliott toward him. Eliott ducks down obligingly, though he stumbles a bit as his sneakers slip over a tree-root, and he ends up mashing his mouth against Lucas’ upper lip. They hold each other beneath the green cascade until another pair of hikers comes along and they have to leap aside, coughing out flustered greetings.

If a unicorn encounter were to happen anywhere, it would happen here, Eliott says, as they stop to eat their lunch beneath a gnarled old oak. Its trunk is wrinkled and knotted with boles; its branches have an impossibly wide spread, and the space beneath them is its own world: the underbrush is dotted with thyme, which fills the air with an herbal sweetness.

“They only go after virgins,” Lucas points out.

Eliott laughs. “Then we’re both out of luck.”

Three and a half hours later, they turn onto the Mountaineers’ Trail and traipse into the boulder field. The area is already crawling with climbers. The boulder called the Elephant is swarming with them, practically ringed by crash pads.

They find a much smaller lump of rock—Eliott can almost reach the top of it when he stretches—pull out Olivier’s chalk, and take turns jumping and grappling at the edges of stone, shrieking and laughing as their fingers slip.

“That’s a new technique,” someone calls, and laughs.

Lucas looks up and sees a pair of climbers in colorful t-shirts and matching olive-green pants, a blonde and a redhead hefting a crash pad between them.

“Seriously,” the blonde continues. “That’s innovative!”

“Shit,” Lucas says, “are we in the way? Did you want to…”

“No, no,” the blonde says. She introduces herself as Laure Ciprès. The redhead points at himself and says, simply, “Mattin.”

Eliott hops down from his attempted traverse to shake hands. Lucas notices the way their eyes are drawn to him. He’s taken the bucket hat off, and Lucas suddenly wants to jam it back on his head and yank it down until it covers his face. 

They’re students from the University of Nangis, amateur climbers, and Elephant-enthusiasts, although the boulder is too crowded to attempt today, Laure says, wrinkling her nose.

“We thought we’d try some of the other problems,” Laure says. She looks them over, Lucas in his dusty shorts and boots, Eliott in his sweatpants, their smooth hands. She smiles. “Do you want to climb with us?”

They follow Laure and Mattin to a larger boulder, called Foot in the Air, and watch as Laure squirrels her way to the top. Eliott joins Mattin in shouting encouragement, and then it’s Mattin’s turn to go up. Lucas finds himself suddenly horrified: he studied helmets in one of his electives and knows that a fall from one meter is enough to crumple a human skull like paper, but here Laure and Mattin are, topping out at three and four meters, seemingly without a care in the world.

Eliott is entranced. When Mattin reaches the ground, Eliott corners him to ask him about technique. He spreads his own fingers wide as he talks, letting Mattin manipulate the joints, and Lucas has a vision of Eliott’s hands transforming into Olivier’s: the hands of a stranger. His stomach turns as he watches the smile blooming across Eliott’s face.

“We should get drinks after this,” Laure says, as the shadows of the afternoon begin to stretch and deepen. “Yeah? Drinks in Barbizon, guys?”

Eliott looks at Lucas.

“We have to go,” Lucas says. “We still want to see the cave. The Brigands’ Cave.”

Mattin makes a face. “Don’t bother,” he says. “It’s a tourist trap. It’s horrible.”

“And Barbizon isn’t?” Lucas says. His voice is too loud. He feels the surprise that ripples through the tall bodies around him.

But Mattin takes it in stride. “It is,” he says peaceably, “but it’s a tourist trap with _beer_, which makes it tolerable. You sure you don’t want to join us for a little?” He directs the question over Lucas’ head. Lucas flushes.

“That might be nice,” Eliott says. “How about it, Lucas? One drink?”

“You can’t,” he says, and Eliott’s jaw drops. The blood burns in Lucas’ cheeks. “I mean—you’re driving,” he says. “Remember?”

“Oh, too bad,” Laure says. “Maybe we can meet up another time, try a few more problems. We’re here every weekend.” Beside her, Mattin nods his agreement, grinning.

“Sure,” Eliott says. He pulls out his phone; they swap numbers.

Lucas says, “I’ll wait for you by the car.”

They don't go to the cave. Its romantic glitter has been tarnished by Mattin's dismissal, and when Eliott mentions it, questioning, Lucas just shakes his head. In the car, Eliott doesn’t seem to notice Lucas’ silence; he talks animatedly about the holds Mattin showed him, flexing and stretching his fingers along the steering wheel. His fingertips are still white with chalk. He goes to shower while Lucas builds the fire, piling one bundle of firewood into the center of the fire-ring.

The thought of the campfire cheers him—they'll sit around it and grill some sausages and hold hands beside the red crackle of the flames, and Eliott will smile at him, and everything will be okay. But when he uncaps Eliott’s lighter and brings the flame against the topmost log, nothing happens, not even a sizzle.

“Shit,” he calls, as the gravel crunches and Eliott returns, towel around his neck, “I think the wood’s damp or something. From the rain on Friday.”

Eliott drifts over.

“Did you bring lighter fluid?” he asks, after a pause. “Kindling?”

“No,” Lucas says. “Do we need them? I didn’t think…” He walked by all of those things at the Decathlon, he remembers, and scoffed at them. “Fuck, I’m so stupid,” he says. “Do you want to try? You were a genius with the tent, you…”

“I don’t think we’ll manage without lighter fluid,” Eliott says. “Hey,” he says, brightening, “I bet they have some, Laure and Mattin. I’ll text them. We can invite them over. Or join them. How about it?”

He thinks of how they smiled at each other, Laure and Eliott, Mattin and Eliott, and the sound bursts from him, involuntary and braying:

“No!”

Eliott stares at him, and he shrinks. “They’re in Barbizon anyway,” he says, “they’re probably getting shit-faced, we don’t have to bother them.” He swallows. “Fuck,” he says. “Sorry. I’ll just—I’m probably just hungry, I’ll eat something. Sorry.”

He opens the cooler, rifling through the plastic bags. Eliott is quiet beside him, and the silence feels both stunned and perilous. He tries to fill it.

“Hey, I don’t see your pills in here,” he says. He nudges aside the last of the apples, the numerous packets of backpacking food, the sixth and final granola bar. “Did they fall out?”

“They’re not in there,” Eliott says.

“Are they still in your bag?” he says. “I don’t think it’s good for them to be out in the heat. Here,” he says, holding his hand out, “I can put them in now.”

“They’re not in there,” Eliott repeats. “I didn’t bring them. I forgot.”

He gapes at Eliott. “You what?”

“I forgot to bring extra socks, too,” Eliott says, shrugging at him. “It’s just three days, Lucas, it’s fine.”

“_Putain_,” Lucas says, “it’s not fine, you have to take them!”

“Well,” Eliott says. He shrugs again.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Lucas mutters, and then he wavers and says, “No, Eliott, I didn’t mean—”

“What’s wrong with you?” Eliott says. His voice is sharp.

His stomach plunges toward his feet. “Eliott.”

“You’re getting so hung up on stupid _shit_,” Eliott says. “So what if we can’t have a fire? It’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of the world if I miss a few doses. Okay, it’s not great, but what are we going to do? Drive back to Paris right now so I can take a pill? A single fucking pill?” His eyes are like flint. “And I can have a drink, Lucas,” he says, vicious, “I can have _one fucking drink_, it’s not going to tip me over the edge. I can feel you watching me. I can feel you watching me like a fucking hawk all the time. I’m not your patient. I’m not your kid!”

“I just want things to go well,” Lucas says. He can barely hear himself over the pounding in his ears. “I just want things to be perfect. You’ve been working so hard, you’ve been so busy, I just—”

“It’s not perfect,” Eliott says, talking over him. “Nothing is perfect, and it’s especially not perfect when you’re so stressed out you’re snapping at every little thing.”

But he has to stress about it, Lucas thinks. Especially now, especially on this trip. He’s taken Eliott away from Paris, from his routine, from his friends, his parents, all the people who love and know Eliott best. He has a vision then, a horrible one, of Eliott running into the woods, Eliott diving into the Loing, the black Loing at night, Eliott smashing his head open falling from the Elephant.

His voice cracks. “I just want to take care of you,” he says.

Eliott shouts, “I don’t need you to do that!”

He can feel his mouth starting to tremble. His vision blurs. He veers away and starts to walk down the path.

Suddenly, Eliott calls after him. “Where are you going?”

His voice is thin and strained, and Lucas falters. But the memory of Eliott’s glare lashes him between the shoulders, and he bites his lip and inhales and takes another step forward, and another, and another, swiping at his eyes.

“I’m going to shower,” he says, because he has to say something; he can’t let Eliott think he’s abandoning him in the dark. Eliott doesn’t respond, but it doesn’t matter, he tells himself. It doesn’t matter, and so he keeps walking.

When he comes back, Eliott is already in the tent. He’s curled in on himself beneath the blanket, a black huddled shape. He doesn’t stir when Lucas sits beside him, doesn’t make a sound as Lucas zips them up.

Lucas lifts the edge of the blanket and slides beneath it. He puts his hand on Eliott’s back, and Eliott pulls away.

He gulps. He thinks about getting up and going to sleep in the car, but he knows that would be unbearable: as long as he stays here, there’s a chance Eliott will roll over, tug Lucas into his arms, kiss his forehead, apologize.

He waits and waits. He can’t remember how he used to breathe beside Eliott—surely this isn’t right. It’s too loud, too shaky. His eyes sting.

Eliott doesn’t move. Eventually, Lucas falls asleep.


	4. Our days are numbered

Lucas wakes to the sound of cascading water. The corners of the tent are damp. Rain pours from the rain fly in clear gushing rivulets. The air smells misty and cold.

Eliott is lying on his side, his hoodie pulled up over his head, his shoulder black and sharp and rigid beneath the blanket. Lucas looks at him, at his utter stillness, and wonders if he’s only pretending to be asleep. The more he stares, the sicker he feels, his heart sinking inside his chest like a stone plummeting into the depths of a winter river, lower and lower until it comes to rest at the frozen bottom. He feels a shiver in his throat like the shifting of sediments.

Quietly, he untangles his legs from the blanket, unzips the flap, and crawls out into the flooded morning.

The rain drenches him immediately, but it suits his mood to be drenched. He walks slowly to the toilets, his flip-flops squishing and squelching under his toes. He doesn’t want to look at himself, and he brushes his teeth with his gaze downcast, looking at the droplets running down his calves.

When he returns to the campsite, Eliott is sitting in the car.

For a moment, Lucas doesn’t know what to do. He reaches for the handle of the passenger-side door, then hesitates, wondering if he’ll find it locked. It isn’t, and he opens it a fraction and sees that Eliott has put a towel and a change of clothes for him on the seat.

Eliott is staring out the driver-side window, his chin on his fist.

“Get in, you’re soaking wet,” Eliott says without turning.

Lucas gets in. He pulls off his sodden clothes and wads them up by his feet. He slides into Eliott’s spare t-shirt and sweatpants. The legs are too long. He rolls them up and towels his hair dry, trying to ignore the lump in his throat.

Eliott starts the car.

“Eliott,” Lucas says. He winces at the hoarseness of his voice and clears his throat. “Where—do you—are we—”

_Are we going back?_

_Eliott—are we finished?_

He can’t bring himself to continue. He swallows and squeezes the towel between his fingers, clutching it: his lifeline, a sign of tenderness. There’s no way Eliott would drive them back to Paris like this, he tells himself, as the car begins to roll onto the gravel. Without the tent, without the lantern. M. Demaury’s camping stove is still sitting by the firepit, a glimmer of red through the rain drumming against the window. Eliott accelerates, and Lucas watches it disappear into the gloom.

The windshield wipers beat a hypnotic cadence through the rain: thump swipe thump, thump swipe. Eliott turns back onto the D607, and Lucas wonders if they’re going to Barbizon. But they take a different exit at the roundabout. Then Lucas sees an expanse of vibrant, saturated green and a long iron gate: the château of Fontainebleau. Eliott takes a hard left into the first available parking garage.

They sit in silence between concrete pillars. The weight of the earth seems to be pressing into the roof of the car, into Lucas’ shoulders.

“Are you hungry?” Eliott says.

Lucas looks up. Eliott still isn’t meeting his eyes. He’s hunched, his hands jammed deep in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.

“There’s a café,” Eliott says, and then he trails off and gets out of the car. Lucas follows.

At the Meunier Bakery, Eliott buys two café au laits, one croissant, and one pain au chocolat. He slides the pain au chocolat across the table to Lucas—flaky and beautiful, so shiny with butter Lucas can almost see the sheeting rain reflected in it from the window. But it tastes like sawdust. He eats it anyway, slowly, swallowing with effort, trying not to watch the steady motion of Eliott’s fingers as they pick the croissant into tatters.

“Lucas,” Eliott says, and Lucas looks at him, at the tight set of his jaw, and suddenly the chocolate in his mouth may as well be cement.

He forces it down with a big gulp of coffee.

Eliott, still shredding his croissant, says again, “Lucas—”

Everything sinks. The checkered floor of the bakery seems to dive under his chair. He almost grabs at the table for support; he does grab it, in fact, as he leaps to his feet, rattling their cups.

Eliott is staring at him, a little pale. Finally, his hands still on his plate.

“The château,” Lucas mumbles.

Eliott’s mouth moves. Lucas thinks he says, _Okay_, or _Lucas_, a third time, but he isn’t sure, and he doesn’t stay to find out.

Lucas wants to imagine the castle with lightning flashing in the background and a dark lord looming inside, but it doesn’t look the least bit sinister, only immense. He could hide here, he thinks, disappear—duck a rope, pick a lock. He can hear the scrape of Eliott’s sneakers behind him as they cross the damp green lawn. A sign declares it to be The Court of Farewells. He flinches away.

Inside the entrance, he grabs an audio tour and watches Eliott do the same out of the corner of his eye. 

The lump in his throat grows jagged. He jams the headset on, presses play, and hurries into the first room, which is dim and quiet and stuffed with a disorienting number of artifacts: vases, dragons, tusks. The audio tour regales him with tales of plunder and theft, but he can’t concentrate, and the information blurs into a wordless, buzzing mass.

Eliott is moving from object to object in the prescribed order, looking intently at each vase or chair or lump of gold in turn. Lucas’ last glimpse of him in the Chinese Museum is of a tall figure gnawing its fingertips, stooping over the replica crown of the King of Siam.

He takes the headset off as he leaves and wanders silently through the castle. The colors of the walls swim together into murky pastels. Through the clouded windows, he can see the faint glow of a pair of red umbrellas in the garden below.

In the apartments of Napoleon I and Josephine, he cuts through a family of middle-aged women loudly admiring the upholstery. The walls are nearly bare, the carpets faded. He turns sharply away into the first available doorway and finds himself standing in the dark. A tour group swirls past, and Lucas joins them unnoticed, passing through a series of secret doors.

“This is the Room of Columns,” the tour guide announces, in nasal excitement. “Meet me by the staircase. Take your time.”

Lucas conceals himself behind a pillar as the other visitors mill around, admiring the veins of crystalline white within the columns of black marble. The room is chilly and poorly lit.

“A popular wedding venue,” the tour guide informs them.

His phone buzzes. He swallows and pulls it from his pocket.

In the toilets that morning he started several messages to Yann and deleted them all: _Eliott got upset. Eliott’s angry with me. I said some stupid things, and Eliott’s angry with me. I think Eliott wants to break up._

_—How was the weekend chez Cazas?_

_Went like a dream_, Yann replies now. _I made a bangin’ omelet, bro, I think Chloé’s gonna propose after she tastes it. And you, I guess you’ve been keeping busy, huh. _Wink, devil. 

_Haha_, he says, absolutely expressionless. Yann is still typing. Lucas sends a tent and every tree on his keyboard.

_I’m glad you guys got the chance to take this trip_, Yann says. _It’s all about making time for each other, isn’t it? Communicating and shit. You inspire me, bro._

Lucas stares at his phone, hesitating before the stairs that will take him to the Grand Appartements. The rest of the group has already disappeared upstairs. He’s the only person between the columns now, being replicated into infinity by the mirrored walls.

_—Chloé’s out of the shower gonna show her the masterpiece byeeee!!!_

He can’t stand it anymore, this gilded cavern. All this finery, this liquid light oozing over antique gold fixtures, the jeweled and painted inlays. Upstairs, there will be more upholstery, more china, more bedrooms, everything ornate and empty, devoid of warmth, devoid of Eliott.

He puts his phone away and begins to retrace his steps.

The downpour has become torrential, and crowds of people are returning to the shelter of the castle, shedding their umbrellas and ponchos by the doors. Harried employees are trying to organize them into lines.

Lucas pushes through the throng, elbowing past a man struggling with his umbrella and a child in yellow rainboots. He’s seen Eliott at the far end of the Gallery of Stags, wreathed in the bluish light filtering through the arched window. His headset is around his neck, the audio tablet in his hand. He turns left, then right, then left again, seemingly unsure of which way to go. Then he looks up, across the gallery, and sees Lucas. He jolts.

They meet in the middle.

“I’m sorry,” Eliott says. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I wish I hadn’t. You’re angry at me, I know. Please don’t be angry anymore, Lucas, I can’t stand it.”

“No,” Lucas says, staring, “no, what—I thought _you_ were angry at _me_.”

“Angry, no,” Eliott says. “I’m ashamed. I’m so—last night—I made you cry. Oh, fuck,” he says, and looks at the shining ceiling, with its nymphs and satyrs, and the light gleams across his irises and the bitten edge of his lip.

“I was being unreasonable,” Lucas says. “I was being a fucking idiot.”

Eliott shakes his head. Rain beads at the tips of his hair—he was outside in the garden, Lucas sees, at least for a little while. “You were worried about me,” he says. “You were just…and I overreacted, I…”

“I should have talked to you about what was worrying me,” Lucas says, “instead of acting like a mother hen, clucking around.”

Eliott’s mouth twitches at that. He still looks upset, though, white and strained, his gaze a little too watery for comfort, and Lucas reaches for him, catches his hands, tablet and all. He feels the sigh that goes through Eliott, the shiver of relief.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas says. “No, listen, please. I was behaving like an asshole.”

“Me, too.”

“Fine, then we’re a pair of assholes,” he says.

Eliott huffs out a laugh, and a tear falls down his cheek, and Lucas hisses.

“Oh, Eliott, no,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

He starts to brush the tear away, and Eliott grabs his hand and kisses it.

They toss their audio tours into a wicker basket and borrow an umbrella they find kicked into a corner of the gallery, darting into the rain, heading arm-in-arm toward the fountain at the center of the Garden of Diana. Eliott holds the umbrella with one hand and clings to Lucas with the other. He’s still a little teary, and he tries to cover it by looking away, pressing his lips together.

“I was jealous,” Eliott says, and Lucas’ feet grind to a halt on the path, stalling them both. “Of Olivier.”

“You—_what_?” he says. The rain is coming down so hard he isn’t sure he’s heard Eliott right at first. He blinks and blinks. “Olivier? _Why_?”

“You’re always talking about him, you see him practically every day—”

Rain spatters Lucas' shoulders as Eliott twitches the umbrella. He's pacing, talking at the castle. Lucas stares at the dark swoop of his eyelashes above the saturated green of the lawn, bewildered.

“He was my partner in hydrogeology this term, we had a fucking gigantic project, of course I—”

“Yes,” Eliott says. “Lucas, you’re going to become an engineer, you’re learning all these amazing things, all I do is paint…”

“And?” Lucas says. “I don’t know anything about painting, Eliott. I don’t know the first thing about—about—Pissarro or Monet. You’re studying so many techniques, so many artists. You’re building entire installations.”

“That’s exactly it,” Eliott says. “That’s what I mean. You see Olivier every day. You spend time with him, work with him. You and I—we’re going to different schools, we have different friends. Different paths.” He glances at Lucas and turns away as Lucas gapes. “Maybe one day you’ll look at me and realize I’m a stranger.”

“Eliott—”

“I know it scared you, seeing me up there,” Eliott says. His eyes are fixed on the fountain. He squeezes the handle of the umbrella in his fist. “But I wanted to try, I wanted to be good at it. At something you were interested in. Something we could do together.”

The goddess Diana is serene, floating on a pedestal above her dogs. The rain pits the surface of the water.

“It did scare me,” Lucas says. “I kept thinking about you falling down and cracking your head open.” He gazes at Eliott beneath the umbrella. The red nylon casts a soft rosy glow across Eliott’s lips, his cheeks, his eyelids. “But I was more upset because I—” he gulps “—because I was jealous, too.”

Eliott looks at him with wide eyes. “You were?”

“Of Laure and Mattin,” Lucas says. “They made me feel stupid. And clumsy. They could climb like spiders. Watching the three of you together…it made me feel like you were getting further and further away from me.”

“I was barely a meter off the ground.”

He nudges Eliott with his elbow. “Silly. You know what I mean. I’m stressed about it, too. The future.”

“Yeah.”

“I was scared you wanted to break up,” Lucas admits. "This morning at the café. I was fucking terrified."

“What?” Eliott says. The umbrella trembles above them as his hand shakes. “Lucas, no. Of course not. I don't want that. I don't.”

“Me neither,” Lucas says. “I don’t want to break up." He takes Eliott's hand. "And that’s all we need to know, isn’t it? To keep moving forward.”

Eliott swallows. He nods.

“Our paths are intertwined,” Lucas says. “I didn’t read the map wrong. I can’t make a fire, and I can’t pitch a tent, but I know how to read a map. Okay, Eliott?”

“We haven’t left the forest yet,” Eliott says, smiling faintly. “There’s still time to get lost.”

“We won’t.”

“You don’t know that,” Eliott says. His smile wobbles. “Lucas, you know there’s no map, not really.”

“You know what?” he says softly. “We don’t even need a map.”

“Lucas—”

“No.” He grins. “We don’t. We can follow the North Star.”

Eliott kisses him then, throwing his arms around Lucas’ neck. Lucas staggers. The umbrella tips to the side and falls into the lawn.

He tucks his fingers into Eliott’s pockets and hauls Eliott closer. The rain is cool on his skin, running down his cheeks, his throat, between their lips and into their mouths. It was raining like this the night they first kissed, he remembers, and Eliott pulled back in just the same way, stroking his thumbs across Lucas’ ears and throwing his head back to laugh into the darkness. Today he laughs into the mild gray afternoon, and he stands much closer, one leg pressed between Lucas’ thighs, his hands warm and gentle as they wind into Lucas’ hair.

“I love you,” Eliott says, “I love you.”


	5. So why are we waiting at all?

The rain lightens into a drizzle. Lucas and Eliott break apart as other visitors begin to rejoin them on the soaked path. They circle the fountain twice, bursting into laughter when they realize the jets of water are coming from the bronze dogs, and then begin the guilty shuffle indoors to return the pilfered umbrella.

“Do you want to go through it again?” Lucas says. “The castle, together?”

Hand in hand, he thinks. He wants to find an alcove and shove Eliott into it and kiss him there in the gold-plated gloom.

“I’m not sure they’ll let us in like this,” Eliott says. His t-shirt is clinging to his body, soaked through. Water drips down his cheeks, picking up speed as he smiles. Then his stomach gurgles.

Lucas grins. “The bakery, then.”

“Fuck, no,” Eliott says. “I think I offended the owner. With what I did to the croissant.”

He snickers. “You skinned it.”

They wring out the hems of their shirts and pants as best as they can by the entrance. At the gift shop, leaving pools of water that squeak beneath their shoes, they buy hoodies—Lucas gets one for Yann, too, and has it hermetically sealed in two plastic bags—and change into them in the restroom, where they try to dry their sodden clothes with paper towels and the tired, wheezing gusts of a decrepit hand-dryer.

They wear their matching hoodies to Pizza Mimi, where Lucas orders a margherita pizza and Eliott scandalizes him by choosing the Hawaiian. They find a table by the window. The street outside is obscured by rain and condensation on the runny panes.

Under the table, Eliott tangles their ankles together and puts his hand on Lucas’ knee. Above the table, he menaces Lucas’ pizza with slices of pineapple excavated from his own. Lucas laughs until his face hurts and smiles at Eliott with pineapple in his teeth.

“We should go to Hawaii,” Eliott says. “Someday.”

Lucas has a vision of Eliott, then, in a billowing Hawaiian shirt, flowers around his neck and an ocean breeze stirring his hair. He grins.

“Ah, but,” Eliott adds hastily, “I won’t try to get into surfing. Don’t worry.”

He’s sure Eliott will be popular with the surfers. He imagines them crowding around Eliott like a pack of golden retrievers, long-haired, shaggy, bouncing excitedly, and swallows his jealousy down along with a mouthful of tomato and basil.

“Surfing could be fun,” he says.

“Lucas No. 2,444 is an amazing surfer,” Eliott says.

“All Lucases are,” Lucas says. “Across every universe. It’s a _universal_ skill.”

Beneath the table, he takes Eliott’s hand and gives it a small, greasy squeeze. He watches the slow curl of Eliott’s smile. They’ll hold hands like this, he tells himself, as they run over the sand; they’ll plunge into the waves together.

The rain has thinned the crowds at Barbizon. Eliott texts Laure, who writes back with a series of rainclouds and sadfaces: she and Mattin have just gotten on the bus back to Nangis. It’s one of two, with a stopover in Melun.

_Rained out by the bastard sky!_ Mattin adds. _Another time._

“Sorry,” Lucas starts to say, but Eliott shakes his head.

“Come on,” he says, pulling a flashlight from his pocket, “let’s see this cave.”

“It’s not that special,” Lucas says. “We don’t have to.”

“Come on,” Eliott says again. “We’re here already.” And when they reach the mouth of the Brigands’ Cave, shielding their eyes from the rain with their hands, Eliott grins and says, “Open sesame!”

It’s dark inside. The drumming of the rain echoes around them; a thin white mist filters in from the mouth of the cave and drifts around their calves. A few families have crammed their way in, and Lucas hears the patter of small footsteps and the shrieking and cackling of thin high voices. Beams of light waver and cross overhead, snagging on smooth gray stone and dripping moss.

Eliott is still grinning at him over the rim of his flashlight, flicking it on and off.

“Scared?” he murmurs. He’s teasing, but he isn’t circling; his arm is locked tight around the small of Lucas’ back, holding Lucas close. In the yellow glow, his expression is tender, his eyes soft.

“Eliott,” Lucas says, “I love you.”

Eliott clicks off his flashlight. Lucas leans up and kisses him.

He kisses Eliott again outside the cave, and again on the cobbled main street of Barbizon, beneath wet eaves, and again and again in the parking lot, until they’re both panting. Eliott drapes over him, loose and longing. Every time Lucas starts to pull away, Eliott noses at him, nips at him, draws him back in.

A car honks in the distance. They jump and separate and take their seats. Eliott slings his arm around Lucas’ seatback as he reverses from their parking space, and Lucas shivers, at his warmth, his closeness; he grips Eliott’s hand in his own, massaging the joints. Eliott leans over to kiss him and keeps kissing him until another car honks—this time at them.

“Oh, fuck off,” Eliott says. “Asshole. Fuck.”

Lucas snorts. They edge into the road.

“Back to camp?” he says, and Eliott nods. The sky is finally beginning to clear, and a gleam of late afternoon sunlight slides across Eliott’s lower lip, swollen from kissing. Lucas reaches up and brushes his thumb over it, across the sheen, and Eliott swears again for entirely different reasons and accelerates.

They glide around the first roundabout. Lucas squirms in his seat and digs his fingers into Eliott’s thigh and tries to think about equations as the landscape blurs by, illuminated here and there by shafts of gold.

His borrowed sweatpants aren’t exactly hiding anything, but Eliott doesn’t comment. He’s staring straight ahead and obeying the speed limit, too, trundling along, and Lucas attributes all of this to pure sadism until an RV camper lumbers out in front of them with turtle-like slowness and Eliott glances at him, eyes wild, and says, “Should I pull over? I want to pull over. Let’s pull over.”

“Here?” Lucas says, dazed. Farmland stretches out on both sides of the D607; their side hosts a herd of cows. He imagines looking up over Eliott’s bare shoulder and staring into enormous, curious, liquid brown eyes. “No way.”

The RV turns lazily onto a service road. Eliott sighs in relief and steps on the gas.

Time distorts. He remembers a stop sign, a missed turn, Eliott’s hand on the inside of his thigh. Fields rise into forest; cows disappear. A moment later, asphalt disintegrates into white gravel, and they’re screeching into their camp site beneath the trees.

Eliott yanks at the handbrake. He fumbles at the ignition, misses, and climbs over the gearbox anyway, crawling into Lucas’ lap, straddling him before he’s even managed to touch his seat belt. They’re in sync, though, of exactly the same mind: Lucas is already pulling at the seat back adjuster.

The seat tilts; they fall backward. Eliott puts both hands on Lucas’ face and licks into his mouth, and Lucas grabs at him, grabs his ass, grinds against him.

Eliott sits up, briefly, to pull off his hoodie and turn the key all the way. The car goes silent, and then all Lucas can hear is the steady trickling of rainwater hitting the roof and his own breathing, spiraling into gasps as Eliott pushes his shirt up and bites him.

“Eliott,” he says, “Eliott, please, _Eliott_,” and he bites his lip as Eliott sucks his right nipple into his mouth, teasing the other with his fingers. Eliott pinches, and Lucas groans and thrusts, trying to rub himself against Eliott’s leg.

Eliott pulls back with a pop.

“Are you stuck?” he says. His voice is rough; his hair is a mess, tumbling into his eyes. He flicks at the seatbelt and smiles.

“Fuck,” Lucas gasps. “_Fuck_.”

Condensation is forming on the windows. Eliott tugs Lucas’ sweatpants down around his thighs, and then he kneels, shivering, as Lucas does the same, straining his shoulders until he can anchor his fingertips under the waistband. He jerks down, freeing Eliott from his pants and briefs at the same time.

Eliott smiles. Lucas swallows at the sight of him and swallows again, mouth dry.

“Come here,” he says, ragged, and Eliott twitches forward, sliding into Lucas’ waiting hand. He kisses Lucas as they stroke each other, muffling Lucas’ groans with his tongue, one knee wedged against the door, the other against the gearbox. The sounds—of their mouths, of their hands, the remnants of the rain, the slight squeaking of their bodies against the upholstery, of Eliott’s panting breaths, his little moans—swirl together and fill Lucas’ ears until his head is spinning. Eliott is shaking above him, whispering his name.

“Together,” Eliott manages, “together, I want to—_Lucas_—please—”

Lucas reaches up, tangling the fingers of his left hand into Eliott’s hair, dragging Eliott toward him.

Eliott’s teeth mash against Lucas’ lips. His hiss melts into a cry as Lucas tightens his grip. His thighs are tight, tensing as though he’s getting ready to spring. He’s tugging at Lucas with both hands now, frantic, bucking into Lucas’ hand.

“Close,” Eliott says, “I’m—”

He cries out again. His cock jumps against Lucas’ palm, and he spasms, banging his head against Lucas’ shoulder.

“_Lucas_!”

His hand loosens around Lucas, but it doesn’t matter. Lucas clings to him, gasping; he digs his fingertips into Eliott’s scalp and groans and comes into the slack circle of Eliott’s fingers.

Eliott slumps against him, his hair tickling Lucas’ eyelids, his breath puffing against Lucas’ jaw. Lucas can feel the flutter of Eliott’s eyelashes against his skin, the sticky movement of his lips as he smiles.

“Mm,” Eliott says.

“Fuck,” Lucas says, when he can speak again. “Eliott. God.”

Through the haze, he hears a click and a chuckle as Eliott releases his seat belt. It retracts with a serpentine rasp.

Lucas opens his eyes.

Eliott is gazing at him, disheveled and pleased. He blinks at Lucas, slowly, then cradles Lucas’ face with wet hands and stoops to kiss him. When he straightens up, he bangs his head on the roof.

Lucas lies back and laughs. Jokingly, Eliott starts to press his hand over Lucas’ mouth, and Lucas swipes at his palm with his tongue and watches the sudden darkening of Eliott’s stare.

They scramble into the back seat and peel off what’s left of their clothes, rutting against each other until the car shakes, and then they fall asleep.

It’s dusk by the time they emerge from the car. Stupefied by sex and sleep, they put their clothes on somewhat haphazardly: Eliott ends up back in his own sweatpants, and Lucas puts his Fontainebleau hoodie on inside-out at first. They roll the windows down and crack the trunk, wincing theatrically at each other as they wipe at the upholstery.

They give up after a few minutes, when Lucas’ stomach starts growling, and borrow lighter fluid and kindling from the family at the neighboring tent site. Eliott accepts the bundle with a bright and shameless smile; Lucas can’t quite meet their eyes. There was more than enough room in the back seat for Eliott to get his mouth on Lucas’ dick, and Lucas was shouting toward the end of the second round, shouting and begging. As they return to their own site, he hears one of the adults, the mother or aunt, beginning to giggle.

Eliott, swinging the jug of lighter fluid in apparent blissful ignorance, leans over and kisses Lucas’ burning cheek. Before long, the fire is burning too.

It’s Eliott’s idea, of course, to combine three of Basile’s blue foil meals—pad thai, chicken curry, and vegetable lasagna—into a single monstrous entrée. He starts to add a packet of expired crème brûlée to the pot next, but Lucas stops him in time, and dinner is heavily spiced but very edible.

The sky darkens. The fire dims. Lucas puts his head on Eliott’s shoulder and gazes up into the heavenly lattice.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Eliott says quietly.

“Eliott,” Lucas says, “hey. Enough. We were both in the wrong. You don’t have to apologize again.”

“I wanted things to be perfect, too,” Eliott says. “But I left you to do all the planning. The kindling, I didn’t say a word about that.”

“You thought it was obvious,” Lucas says. He kisses Eliott’s ear. “Don’t rub it in, okay?”

“My dad,” Eliott says. He pauses. “My dad’s always going on about how the outdoors are a great test of love.”

“He is?”

It’s almost as difficult to imagine Michel Demaury waxing poetic about tests of love as it is to picture Irène Demaury cursing as she zigzags down a boulevard.

"He is!" Eliott says. "You know he and my mother spent an entire month in the Alps before they got married. In Chamonix. When I told him about our trip, he got this look in his eye, he told me the story all over again..."

Lucas snorts. “Four days and three nights is hardly long enough for a test,” he says. "Compared to full month."

“Well, what do you think is a long enough amount of time?” Eliott says, with a smile in his voice. “One week? Two?”

He remembers Arthur’s disastrous trip: two weeks in the Pyrenees culminating in a midnight escape by bus. Basile often jokes that Bianca is still living in Roncesvalles to this day, her arms tattooed with holy clamshells.

He thinks about his own parents’ marriage, disastrous too in its own way. He’s not sure they ever spent a night in the woods together. They married young, straight out of lycée; his father didn’t move into his mother's apartment until the rings had been exchanged.

And he thinks about Yann and Chloé, probably curled up on the cursed couch right now, watching a movie. Chloé’s headphones are going to end up beneath a couch cushion again, and Yann will have to dig them out for her, deliver them to her dormitory on the other side of the Seine.

“Lucas?”

The stars are glimmering overhead.

“My lease will be up soon,” Lucas says. He can feel the swell of Eliott’s lungs as he inhales: a sharp, stuttering breath. He takes Eliott’s hand. “If you want to…you know. Try it out. A longer test.”

He looks up at Polaris, shining steadily at the tip of the tail of Ursa Minor, at the faint band of the Milky Way, weaving through the stars.

Eliott says, “I do.”

They stay up late talking about where they want to live: which arrondissement, what kind of apartment, what kind of amenities. Eliott dreams big and sometimes absurd, his eyes twinkling. He asks for a swimming pool and a penthouse loft, giggling as Lucas elbows him. Then he sobers and asks how Yann will take the news.

“He’ll need a handkerchief for real,” Lucas jokes. “To dry his tears.”

But in fact he thinks Yann will be relieved, even delighted; Yann will rally Le Gang and lead the gathering of housewarming gifts. He may even move in with Chloé.

And Lucas will tear out the pages of his notebook with their anxiously scribbled pill counts and dates. He'll crumple them up and recycle them.

It’s midnight by the time they douse the embers and get ready for bed. In the morning, they’ll drive back to Paris, and Eliott will swear at the traffic on the A6 until he’s red in the face. They’ll stop at a gas station outside the city to refill the tank and try and fail to clean the back seat again, and Eliott will calm down, and Lucas will give the windows a scrub with a squeegee. Their eyes will meet over the windshield, and they’ll smile at each other, at the road ahead, at their possible penthouse, their joined future.

He brushes his teeth. He texts Yann. When he comes back from the toilets, shuffling across the damp gravel, he sees that Eliott has already gone inside the tent. The night sky is tranquil, the tent lit from within by their lantern. Eliott’s shadow hovers inside a bubble of tranquil, glowing green beneath a mantle of stars.

Lucas lifts the flap, kicks off his flip-flops.

“Lucas,” Eliott says. He smiles and opens his arms.

Grinning, Lucas crawls inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fin! Thank you for reading this bit of summer fluff. I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> ([FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) asked me to include some relationship advice in the aftermath of this fic, i.e., yet another story about an argument between these dramatic French boyfriends. Theirs is, "Don't go to bed angry." I will add the following: communicate! And be gentle with yourself.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked, please [reblog](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/186890191319/fontainebleau-zetaophiuchi-ryuujitsu-skam)!


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